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**WARNING**

Typically I am not one to rant or be pissed about "changes" to an MMO. However after a year + break from EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard series of SOE products I decided it was time to jump back onto the games and refresh my characters and get back on the nostalgia train.

I have been following to whole free to play/freemium crowd for some time. I have played LOTRO and I loved their system of "free to play" along with other games. Upon booting up my EQ 2 launcher and patching I noticed a lot of, shall I say, greed based changes. I was bombarded almost instantly with "upgrade to GOLD!" and all the cool stuff you can buy before I even got into the game.

After I logged in I got to my character list...in which I saw two of my 6 characters locked out. One happens to be my highest level character and my second highest a level 68 troubador was playable. I had to pay $ to UNLOCK a main character OR pay gold member. Really?... really???? did this just happen?.

So I jump into the game and immediately I am swamped by changes.. which is fine! changes are good. After an hour of reading through changes, class changes, UI changes I was sorting through my skills and respecced. Right away I go to attack an even con mob and get completely destroyed. I was thinking what the? I mean Troubadors aren't exactly bad ass soloers but i never had an issue before. I realized half of my armor was missing plus I had no weapons equipped.

Upon looking further, all my legendary gear was removed and I was unable to equip them. SEVERAL of my items were locked in bags that were LOCKED because I didn't have gold. It rendered my character completely useless to the point that I couldn't even play or even look through/sort everything my character had. I won't even get to the point of my house....

Fact is, SOE has no loyalty to customers. My account is 2400 days old for pete sake....I understand socking it to the new player and a new free account... but treating a veteran like a short bus kid when he's just trying to check out his shit is kinda derpa derp in my book.

So, I was really willing to give this whole freemium thing a go and was pretty excited about it, but now I feel "forced" to buy gold to do a damn thing. Literally, a damn thing... and what further disgusted me was the clutter. Really SOE? player made dungeons that cost money to play? battlegrounds? instant dungeons with exp bonuses?. This game stinks of desperation and greed now, I seriously can't put in anymore words how disappointed I am. I can't even look forward to EQ next now or Planetside 2 for fear of money hungry devs.

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totally not surprised tbh, SOE's rep has been bad for ages, sounds like they've given up on trying to improve it. moving previously P2P games to F2P, monetizing them etc, though, is bound to create problems, and it looks like once again, SOE is more than willing to burn their playerbase, im guessing though if you had chosen the 'subbed' method of play, then all your toons+gear would have been unlocked, even so, i can't see their current methods being too popular, kind of yet another Deja' vu' moment really with SOE. Given Sony's financial status though, it might be a case of desperate measures for desperate times.

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Originally posted by Chiram

Typically I am not one to rant or be pissed about "changes" to an MMO. However after a year + break from EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard series of SOE products I decided it was time to jump back onto the games and refresh my characters and get back on the nostalgia train.

uhm...a year away and only trying it out to refresh nostalgia....why would they cater to that? You may be a veteran, but you ditched them for something new and cry because they are not bending over backwards to let you play for free?

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Originally posted by vellus

Originally posted by Chiram

Typically I am not one to rant or be pissed about "changes" to an MMO. However after a year + break from EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard series of SOE products I decided it was time to jump back onto the games and refresh my characters and get back on the nostalgia train.

uhm...a year away and only trying it out to refresh nostalgia....why would they cater to that? You may be a veteran, but you ditched them for something new and cry because they are not bending over backwards to let you play for free?

the smart (and original version) of that move came from funcom. they on the other hand locked all chars, and gave you 2 free "unlocks" by choice.
way better solution imo ^^

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I had the same problem in EQ2. When they went free to play I updated the game and thought I would log in and check out the Freeport redesign, I found I couldn't log in any of my characters, they were all restricted race/class combos and I couldn't roll a new char on the server because my slots were all full. A couple months later I heard they had opened up prexisitng characters, so I logged back in and took my defiler out for a spin. She was completely naked and no room in the bags to put all of her equipment that had come off and was in inventory overflow.

I don;t like their free to play system but it is feasable for rolling a new character and leveling up a bit to see if you like the game. For existing characters or if you want to play seriously I don't see a way to avoid the sub. My husband and I have some lowbie chars that we rolled fresh in EQ and they will be ok unsubbed until they hit the AA cap, at which point I think we will either have to sub or quit.

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Last time you played you played for free I assume, it simply doesn't make sense with your complaints.

It's a subscription based MMO with the option to experience it without paying any subscription. And as you have played it before you have already had a subscription on the game so you already knew this.

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Cant we just have one general SoE thread for people who are can't think beyond themselves enough to understand the f2p model? Good, you don't like it. here is your cookie and move on. System wasn't designed for people who want to play high level characters for free (although intelligent people can do it very cheaply if they arent altaholics).